Page:Guy Mannering Vol 2.djvu/229

Rh house of Vanbeest and Vanbruggen, and told him some goose's gazette about his being taken in a skirmish with the land-sharks—he gave him for a footboy. Me let him escape?—the bastard kinchin should have walked the plank ere I troubled myself about him."

"Well, and was he bred a foot-boy then?"

"Nein, nein; the kinchin got about the old man's heart, and he gave him his own name, and bred him up in the office, and then sent him to India—I believe he would have packed him back here, but his nephew told him it would do up the free trade for many a day, if the youngster got back to Scotland."

"Do you think he knows much of his own origin now?"

"Deyvil! how should I tell what he knows now? But he remembered something of it long. When he was but ten years old, he persuaded another Satan's limb of an English bastard like himself to